'"What?" Those devil's eyes swiveled to stare at Cormac.
"He's a lass, I tell you. O'Malley. He-she's a lass."
"What nonsense are you spouting now, Cormac?"
"It's no nonsense." Rory got to his feet, his eyes still fastened on Caitlyn with a kind of horror. "That's a lass."
Connor's eyes turned back to rake Caitlyn, who lay huddled on the grass in a state of what almost amounted to shock, her eyes huge on Connor's face. "He looks like no lass I ever saw. Your brain's getting soft, the pair of you."
Drawing a quick, shaky breath, Caitlyn mustered all her courage and scrambled to her feet. Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance the younger d'Arcys wouldn't be able to convince their brother. Maybe she could even make them doubt what they'd seen. Desperate, she realized that a bluff was her only chance.
" 'Tis naught but a pack of lies! I'm as much a man as any of you! Aye, and more than you, Cormac d'Arcy. I bloodied your nose right proper, did I not?"
The three d'Arcys stared at her. None seemed about to rise to the bait. Connor's eyes in particular unsettled her as he ran them slowly from the very top of her head down the length of her body to her wet shoes and back up again, stopping to frown at strategic spots in between.
"We were sporting around and Cormac yanked his- her breeches to his knees. He-she was as bare as a babe,
Connor. And she's a lass. There's no doubt at all, Connor." Rory's voice was hoarsely earnest.
"A lass!" Connor looked as dumbfounded as the others.
"Nay!" Caitlyn yelled, backing away as Connor took a step toward her. Flight was her objective. She would not stay to be abused by men who knew her true sex. Her mother's fate flashed like a horrible warning before her. Although her body had never been used by a man, she was no innocent. She knew the violence that men for their own pleasure perpetrated on helpless females. Her mother had dressed her in male attire to prevent just such a thing from happening to her. She would run, hide in the countryside, make her way back to Dublin…
"Catch him-her-oh, hell, just do it, Rory!" Connor gave the clipped instruction just as Caitlyn turned to flee. Rory was already behind her. His hands closed over her upper arms, stopping her in mid-step with her back to him.
"Let me go! Let me go!" Terror gave her strength as she struggled wildly. Her first crazed thought was that she would be thrown on the ground and used by the three of them there and then. Men were beasts about their pleasure. Rory's grip on her arms was unbreakable, so she picked up her foot and kicked backward as hard as she could, catching him in the kneecap.
"Arghh! Sweet Brian, she's a little hellcat! Here, give me a hand, Cormac, quick!"
Caitlyn screamed as Cormac grabbed her around the waist, lifting her clear off the ground with one arm tight around her knees to try to still her kicking while Rory held her flailing fists. Writhing in desperate fear and anger, she shrieked curses at the top of her lungs.
"Watch her feet! Hold 'em, Cormac!"
"Hell, you hold her hands! She nigh tore off my privates earlier! She's vicious as a trapped badger!"
Rory and Cormac barely managed to hold her in a position in which she could do relatively little damage to either of them. They eyed their older brother desperately, but he was watching Caitlyn's frantic struggles, a frown on his face.
"Here, now. No one's going to hurt you. So just give over, lass, do." Connor was speaking to her, his voice gentle, soothing. Caitlyn called him a name that would have made a whore blush and spat in his direction. She had the satisfaction of watching him jump back so that the spittie just missed his boots. His frown darkened as he stared at her.
"Watch it, Conn. She's already bloodied Cormac's nose." A note of humor was beginning to return to Rory's voice. "And tweaked his privates. No telling what she might do to you."
"Be silent, idiot. Can't you see the wee lass is frightened?" Connor said. Then, to Caitlyn in the same gende voice he had used before: "O'Malley, quit your thrashing and we'll just talk, I swear. No one will lay a finger on you. We mean you no harm at all, at all."
"Burn in hell, you bloody bastard!" With that she writhed so violently that she managed to bring her head down to the level of Cormac's shoulder. With a growl like an animal's, she bit him until she tasted blood.
"Oww! Oh! Jaysus, she's bit me! The litde hellcat's bit me!" Cormac danced backward, his grip on Caitlyn slipping, so that her feet touched the ground.
"Hold her, Cormac, damn it!" Kicking violently, she also managed to make Rory leap back. She was nearly free-
"Enough!" The brusque word was accompanied by a hand on the neck of her coat jerking her off balance. As she stumbled backward, she felt an arm slide under her knees. The hand that had been in her coat caught both her wrists, imprisoning them. She was being lifted… Screaming, fighting for her life, Caitlyn found herself slung around Connor's shoulders like a dead deer, her head and arms imprisoned on one side of his chest, her legs trapped on the other. His hold was like iron; her violent struggles availed her nothing. But still she kicked and screamed and cursed as he swung around and carried her into the house.
"Your lordship, what in the name of heaven-?" Attracted by the bloodcurdling screams, Mrs. McFee came hurrying from the kitchen to stare stunned as Connor headed with his burden toward the stairs.
"What're you doin' to O'Malley?" Willie, his mouth rimmed by some kind of red sauce, had followed Mrs. McFee into the hall. Caitlyn got just a glimpse of them, accompanied by a surprised but grimly satisfied-looking Mickeen, as she was borne off up the stairs.
"You let me go! I'll tear you limb from limb, I will, you-!" Caitlyn was beside herself with fear and rage as Connor gained the upper landing and took her into a small, sparsely furnished room that from the desk and papers strewn about she surmised was used as an office. He bent and, ducking his head, lifted her up and deposited her in a hard straight chair while still retaining his grip on her wrists. Keeping his legs deftly out of reach of her kicks, he leaned forward until his eyes were on the level of hers. The glint in those aqua eyes gave her pause. For just a minute her screaming, kicking struggles were suspended as she stared back at him. If she'd had her hands free, she would have once again made the sign that warded off the evil eye. Then she got hold of herself. Evil eye or no, this was a mortal man who would harm her as a mortal man harms a female. To save herself, she had to fight.
"Lay a hand on me and I'll kill you, I swear I will," she said through her teeth. The fierceness of the threat made his eyebrows lift, and then a corner of his mouth quirked up just a fraction in the suggestion of an unwary smile. Caitlyn, knowing in the part of her mind that was stiJl thinking rationally how absurd it was that she, who wasn't even half his size, should threaten dire bodily harm to him, saw no humor in the situation at all. She might be small, but she would inflict some damage on him if he didn't leave her be. She would!
"Nobody's going to hurt you," he said soothingly. "I just want some straight answers, if you please. First, and most important, are you lad or lass?"
"Lad!"
He looked at her in a considering way. His face was very close, close enough so that she could see that, without the rice powder, his skin was a light golden bronze.
The blue-black of his hair and brows was matched by the color of the thick stubby lashes that framed those aqua eyes. His nose was long and straight in his narrow face, his cheekbones high and his jaw strong and lean. A day's growth of whiskers stubbled his cheeks. His mouth was wide and well shaped, and now it quirked maddeningly at her. As she gave him back look for look, her impulse was to spit at him, which she just managed to control for dire fear of the consequences.
"The truth, mind!"
"Lad!"
Connor sighed. "It would be very easy to check, you know, if you make it necessary. Now, I will ask this just once more, and the consequences of a falsehood lie on your own head: are you lad or lass?"
Caitlyn glared at him. She was in a terrible quandary. Every instinct urged her to deny the truth, but as he had said, it would be very easy to check. He would probably enjoy doing so. It might even lead to the very thing of which she had lived in dread for so long.
"Lass," she spat, hating him. Her eyes met his with angry, proud defiance. If he thought she would now cringe before him, he was very mistaken.
"Ahh!" he said. Then, "If I were to let you go, would you find it necessary to rend me limb from limb, do you suppose? Or could you sit there peacefully, knowing yourself in no danger at all, while we exchange a few words of harmless conversation?"
She said nothing, just glowered at him.
"Will you sit?" he asked, his hands tightening only a fraction on the wrists he still imprisoned. Remembering the power those hands could exert from the day before, she nodded jerkily.
"Aye."
"Very well." He straightened, releasing her, his hands on his hips as he regarded her as one would an extremely problematic object. Caitlyn lifted her chin and met him stare for stare. Inwardly she was quaking with fear. But if she had learned nothing else in her years on the streets, she had learned never to show that she was afraid of any- one or anything. "So you're a lassie, are you? What are we to do with you now, I wonder?"
The softness of his voice told her that he was speaking mainly to himself. The answer would occur to him before long, if it hadn't already, she felt sure. What else would a man do with a female who was helpless and in his power but use her for his pleasure? Maybe they all would. At the thought, sweat broke out on her upper lip. She had to escape-she had to! Despair brought the glimmer of a plan.
"I'm sore hungry," she said humbly, dropping her eyes so that he wouldn't see the gleam of desperation in them and be put on guard. "Would there be a chance that you could get me something to eat before we talk further?"
She felt his eyes on the top of her bent head. Daring a peep up at him, she saw that the frown once again creased his brow. Afraid that her very meekness might make him suspect her motives, she took a quick breath for courage. Lifting her chin, she met those aqua eyes head-on. "Or is it that you're planning to starve me?"
The belligerence of her tone sounded entirely natural, she decided. Not a hint of panic or resolve was to be heard. He even smiled a litde.
"Nah, we've no plans to starve you, lad or lass. Mrs. McFee has some supper left, I'm sure. But you'll stay in this room while I fetch it. And I'll be locking the door behind me. We still have some talking to do."
With that warning, he turned and left the room, closing and locking the door behind him as he had threatened. Caitlyn could barely contain her relief. It was what she had been aiming for, to be left alone. There was a window in the room. It was small, but then so was she. She would be out it in a trice.
Moving swiftly but as silendy as possible across the room, waiy of creaking boards, she grasped the latch and pulled. With a loud creak that brought her heart flying into her throat, one side of the casement opened inward. Then she saw why he had been so willing to leave her alone. The window was firmly shuttered. Opening the other half of the casement, she shoved against the shutters with all her might, but to no avail. They were solid wood, firmly latched. Then, through the tiny crack that separated the two panels, she saw a narrow dark line. The latch! If she could just find something thin enough to fit through that narrow space, and strong enough to pry up the hook…
Knowing that Connor could return at any instant, she quickly searched the room, and at last found what she sought on the littered surface of the mahogany desk: an elegant silver letter opener! Grasping her prize, she ran back to the window. Its blade was just a trifle too wide, but she managed to wedge it into the opening by holding it in her left hand and using the heel of her right hand as a hammer. Finally she had it positioned, its point just below the latch. Holding her breath, she forced the letter opener upward. After much maneuvering, the point of the letter opener caught the center of the latch. The latch slid up, then with a faint clatter fell back against the shutter outside. She pushed at the shutters, and they opened with a creak of rusty hinges. She found herself looking over the side of the house toward the way she had come. On the horizon Donoughmore Castle was silhouetted against the nearly dark sky, black and huge as it brooded high above. Caitlyn looked down, saw that the yard around the house was shadowy and deserted, and swung her leg over the sill. It was a goodly drop, but she had survived worse. Hanging by her hands from the sill, she let herself fall to the ground. Hitting on the balls of her feet, she staggered forward, caught herself, then dropped into a low crouch. After satisfying herself that she was unobserved, she was off and running. Toward what she didn't know; she only knew that she had to get away.